It seems a little misleading to say that "Congress" or the "Senate" made an edit just because it came from a particular IP address. There are a lot of people that work there, not even counting Congressional staffers. It makes it sound as though a Congressman made or authorized an edit when it could be just about anyone.

We get all upset when corporations blame individuals for piracy or whatnot based on a IP address.

Although I suppose it gets to be too long for Twitter when you add the "someone on Capitol grounds" caveat.

News to me. I thought editing Wiki articles required an audit trail, including the user account making the changes.

Most wiki articles can be edited anonymously. Some require an account, but they're the minority, AFAIK.

Anonymous users are identified by IP. The IP and therefore location of registered users cannot be identified except by a special kind of administrator. It's actually easier to be "anonymous" by registering an account. In fact, that would prevent you from showing up on this twitter feed.

Nice idea but easily thwarted by editing from home or coffee shop or using a VPN. In fact this could be easily used as an offensive tool by editing an opponent's page anonymously at the right time and then the bot picks up the change to alert the media...

"But if anyone in Congress decides that history needs some careful, anonymous editing, they may want to do it from home. Otherwise, @congressedits will alert the world."

Why editing wikipedia webpages from their own homes would improve their anonymity ?

Well, first of all, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people that work in the capitol complex so it's probably not a Congressman anyway. It could be some guy working in the food court or any number of people working for Congress and not for a Congressman.

Second of all, it's not like there's a list of IPs assigned to the personal residences of Congressmen. They have the same IPs as everyone else when at home.

EDIT: The only number I've found is about 20k people working in the capitol complex, which includes the Government Printing Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Capitol Police, the Library of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, a couple thousand maintenance personnel, a jillion peon staffers, etc.

I'm glad to know someone in Congress added that "President Barack Obama shook hands with a man wearing a horse head mask". This is an important piece of information that I need for my new book. For now the title of the book is "Presidents that shake hands with people who wear horse head masks", but I'm open to suggestions.

Also, I still need 43 more pics of the other presidents shaking hands with horse head masks. I only have this one:

Ed Summers, an IT specialist at the Library of Congress and an open source Web developer

In other news, Congress votes to eliminate the Library of Congress IT budget. Quoting from a joint statement from the leadership of both the House and Senate, "Libraries ran fine without computers for thousands of years, we see no need to waste tax payer dollars trying to fix something that isn't a problem."

I think this is useful, albeit marginally. As people here are pointing out, the vast majority of the results from this feed are going to be mundane and useless, but how many political scandals have arisen out of something illicit done hastily and foolishly without attention to security or common sense? The day this catches a Wiki smear campaign from within the Capitol during election season, or the deletion of important information on a hot-button political topic is the day it becomes worthwhile. Until that day, it's not like there's any harm in aggregation of freely-and-publicly-available mundane data.

"But if anyone in Congress decides that history needs some careful, anonymous editing, they may want to do it from home. Otherwise, @congressedits will alert the world."

Why editing wikipedia webpages from their own homes would improve their anonymity ?

Well, first of all, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people that work in the capitol complex so it's probably not a Congressman anyway. It could be some guy working in the food court or any number of people working for Congress and not for a Congressman.

Second of all, it's not like there's a list of IPs assigned to the personal residences of Congressmen. They have the same IPs as everyone else when at home.

EDIT: The only number I've found is about 20k people working in the capitol complex, which includes the Government Printing Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Capitol Police, the Library of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, a couple thousand maintenance personnel, a jillion peon staffers, etc.

While I get what you're saying, I think the premise is flawed.

Just because there are a "jillion" staffers doesn't mean every one of them has Internet access to the IP assigned to Congress, let alone open enough access to post anything anywhere.

One would expect that if there IS general, open access by anyone to the IP addresses assigned specifically to Congress (which is what the story implies is the how they're assigned), that it's restricted in some way (a log-on, and no BYOD's) and can be traced back to a particular machine (If by no other means than the cookie from Wikipedia).

I mean, someone has to have some kind of control on what goes into or, more importantly, comes out of, the the IP's assigned to congress, and the government in general. I know this is the government we're talking about, but still... It's not like there's likely that much of a free-for-all for anyone to use the IP's assigned to congress. Otherwise, there'd be no point at all to this tweet service.

As for your reply, it was incomplete and misleading. The question was why would editing from home improve anonymity. Who posted was never part of the question, and that's what you answered first. Who posted was never going to be revealed by this service.

To answer the question, it's because the home IP is going to be different from the ones assigned to Congress, and therefore not monitored by this service. The anonymous part only relates to whether an edit is reported by the service. It doesn't mean there's some other kind of improvement in overall anonymity by posting from home, or a cafe or library or some other such place. Only as long as it's not posted from inside the Congressional IP blocks, it won't be reported by this service.

The report doesn't specifically say WHO posted the edits - only that edits were posted from a machine using the Congressional IP block.

But because the IP IS recorded, it can be traced back to a large degree to a particular network and, possibly, to a particular machine. It's still impossible to say who actually made the post. And that takes a lot more work.

However, I'd argue that posting from home, for anyone who WORKS at congress, would be EASIER to track down who did it because the IP is recorded and it's pretty hard to deny that it was that person if they're the only one who lives at that residence or uses that machine. Even though that takes a lot more work, it's more accurate as to who did it, therefore LESS anonymous than posting from an open wifi somewhere else.

"But if anyone in Congress decides that history needs some careful, anonymous editing, they may want to do it from home. Otherwise, @congressedits will alert the world."

Why editing wikipedia webpages from their own homes would improve their anonymity ?

Well, first of all, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people that work in the capitol complex so it's probably not a Congressman anyway. It could be some guy working in the food court or any number of people working for Congress and not for a Congressman.

Second of all, it's not like there's a list of IPs assigned to the personal residences of Congressmen. They have the same IPs as everyone else when at home.

EDIT: The only number I've found is about 20k people working in the capitol complex, which includes the Government Printing Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Capitol Police, the Library of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, a couple thousand maintenance personnel, a jillion peon staffers, etc.

While I get what you're saying, I think the premise is flawed.

Just because there are a "jillion" staffers doesn't mean every one of them has Internet access to the IP assigned to Congress, let alone open enough access to post anything anywhere.

The staffers do.

Quote:

One would expect that if there IS general, open access by anyone to the IP addresses assigned specifically to Congress (which is what the story implies is the how they're assigned), that it's restricted in some way (a log-on, and no BYOD's) and can be traced back to a particular machine (If by no other means than the cookie from Wikipedia).

All you have to do is work in the Congressional areas of the building. Looking at the source that probably does exclude most other organizations like the GPO or LoC. But it does still include thousands of people that are not Congressmen.

It is, in fact, not restricted that way, and nobody is going to be able to track it back to a particular machine, unless IT keeps very detailed usage logs. And they don't. The only difference between government IT infrastructure and corporate IP infrastructure is that the government's IT infrastructure is always in worse shape. Congress is no exception.

Quote:

I mean, someone has to have some kind of control on what goes into or, more importantly, comes out of, the the IP's assigned to congress, and the government in general.

Why? I promise you it ain't so, but I'm curious as to why you think that "has" to be the case.

Quote:

I know this is the government we're talking about, but still... It's not like there's likely that much of a free-for-all for anyone to use the IP's assigned to congress. Otherwise, there'd be no point at all to this tweet service.

The tweet services is just a fun, feel-good side project. If you expect accuracy, then you're right. There is no point to this project.

Quote:

However, I'd argue that posting from home, for anyone who WORKS at congress, would be EASIER to track down who did it because the IP is recorded and it's pretty hard to deny that it was that person if they're the only one who lives at that residence or uses that machine. Even though that takes a lot more work, it's more accurate as to who did it, therefore LESS anonymous than posting from an open wifi somewhere else.

Except nobody has a mapping of residences to IP addresses. The only "person" who would know is their ISP. You could do all the "work" in the world and not figure it out. It is indeed more anonymous. You're doing good to get within a hundred miles with IP-based geolocation.

Honestly, if you were to visit the Capitol and brought your laptop, you could probably within 15 minutes ask somebody wandering the halls (maybe even a Congressman), ask them if you could plug in for a minute or for a wireless password, and you'd be on. It's really not hard to do. Visit DC and see for yourself.

News to me. I thought editing Wiki articles required an audit trail, including the user account making the changes.

Most wiki articles can be edited anonymously. Some require an account, but they're the minority, AFAIK.

Anonymous users are identified by IP. The IP and therefore location of registered users cannot be identified except by a special kind of administrator. It's actually easier to be "anonymous" by registering an account. In fact, that would prevent you from showing up on this twitter feed.

It seems a little misleading to say that "Congress" or the "Senate" made an edit just because it came from a particular IP address. There are a lot of people that work there, not even counting Congressional staffers. It makes it sound as though a Congressman made or authorized an edit when it could be just about anyone.

We get all upset when corporations blame individuals for piracy or whatnot based on a IP address.

Although I suppose it gets to be too long for Twitter when you add the "someone on Capitol grounds" caveat.

I'm so glad that someone in Congress is updating the wiki page for Step Up 3D. Seems like a good use of taxpayer money.

1. It could be just about anyone.2. Do you ever get on Ars at work?3. Some people basically live there, including some Congressmen.

I know enough Congresscritters to know they've received a lot of email about not doing untoward things from Congressional IP address blocks. (The primary concern was torrenting, but I imagine this will quickly become a major concern if it becomes a real problem.)

I never get on Ars at work, by the way. But that might be because I am often never logged in to a computer connected to the internet while at work. That's what paralegals are for.

Good pic of O shaking hands with someone wearing a horse head mask…the obvious joke being at the other end. Anyway, I hope they catch the edits being made by the danged janitor on the desktop somebody left powered on when they left the office.